For his first trick, the terrorist presents
by Virgil's Student
Summary: Thriller style fic, with Lucas as main character and Harry and Ruth making their way as a couple. Spoilers for season 8, uses the team as it exists after 8.3.
1. Chapter 1

_**This is another thriller style fic, with Lucas as the main character and Harry and Ruth finding their way as a couple. Not sure how many chapters for this one yet. Please review. It makes me want to write the next chapter.**_

_**There is a bit of language in this fic, but nothing worse than what the show uses on occasion.**_

_**Spoilers for Season 8, uses the team as it exists after 8.3. I imagine this taking place sometime after the end of Season 8.**_

* * *

The alarm bleeped shrilly through Lucas' troubled sleep and he slammed his palm against its top to silence its angry call. "Piss off!", he groaned, before rolling over and trying to rid himself of the lingering images of his nightmares. Every night he was plagued by the clowns of his Russian prison circus - Darshavin would give way to Kachimov, followed by the thugs of his dormitory holding him still while the tattoos were applied in their amateur, garish way. And now Sarah's face swam amongst them too; her piercing blue eyes mocking him as she urged Darshavin on in his dastardly pursuit for information. As she jabbed him with a cold finger, selecting the next place he would be branded....

The alarm on his mobile rang this time, the reminder he had added the night before. His insomnia was such that he knew additional measures should be taken to ensure he awoke in time for work. He groaned again and sat up, rubbing his weary hands over his face, and then checking his torso, almost as if he expected a new tattoo or wound to have appeared during the night. The ghastly characters of his time in Russia were dead or imprisoned far away, but their spectre was all too real and present for his comfort. He crawled out of bed and resisted the urge to hide himself away. A shower and work, he decided - but how many more days could his paltry medicine keep such pain from crippling him?

He cursed the slowness of the hot water tank as he stood outside the curtain. Truthfully, he didn't have the time to wait, but he knew the icy water would trigger a further flashback and only slow his progress further. It was relentless, this onslaught of memories that didn't lessen over the months since he had returned. But ultimately, what help was available? Tring? Level 6 of Thames House from whence no-one ever returned with a career? His job was everything to him, and there had to be a way of dealing with Russia's legacy that he just hadn't found yet. He stepped resolutely into the shower and allowed the almost scalding water to ease the tension of his muscles. His tattoos gleamed, the skin around them almost iridiscently pink after the water caressed them.

* * *

Ruth finished buttoning her blouse and clipped on her earrings while Harry fixed his tie behind her. She was just the right height to stand in front of him so that they were able to share the mirror, Harry mused - it all could have been so much more complicated. There were moments when they got in each others' way, or said the wrong thing, but they were finding their way slowly. Together. Ruth smiled at him in their shared reflection, the warmth spreading through her body as she remembered how much she loved these nights during the week when one of them played sleepover. There was something about the morning mess of tangled limbs and tousled hair that she thrilled to, and the only thing that made it even better was how much Harry seemed to enjoy finding her there. Harry kissed her cheek swiftly and murmured his goodbyes but she caught his hand before he could run away.

"You need milk. I'll get some before I come back tonight, shall I?"

Harry answered her by kissing her soundly on her full lips and smiling through it while Ruth chuckled at his enthusiasm. There was a time when such a domestic concern would have bothered him terribly. Now it only served to remind him that Ruth would be back in the evening to share his bed. It made him shiver in anticipation.

* * *

Ruth arrived on the Grid a little before 8am to find Ros on the phone arguing with someone and Harry in his office doing the same. Lucas slouched in behind her holding a cup of coffee from the local independent across the road.

"Organized chaos?" he queried, grinning slightly at Ruth. He found it impossible to help liking Ruth, as her warmth and gentleness reminded him vividly of his mother before she died. But it went deeper than that. Perhaps it was something to do with the fact that at heart neither Ruth nor Lucas were physically violent people. For Lucas, the art of hurting another person, even in self defence, was not one that came easily. Although since returning from Russia, his temper was harder to check and taking advantage of the opportunity to attack another human being was uncomfortably easy......he shut that train of thought down promptly as Ruth answered him with a shrug and the careless reply:

"Perhaps. Chaos of some type though, I'll warrant."

Lucas smiled in his turn and dumped his mailbag satchel on his desk. It was still so strange being back here; every day he looked around as though expecting it to be a fantasy he had summoned while being tortured. His dreams made the present all the more unbelievable, almost as though the reality of the Grid and his work were the dreams and his nightmares the reality. As they had been for so long.

"Thanks fucking much to you too."

Ros slammed down the phone, fuming. She turned to her colleagues, including Tariq who had just pushed his way through the slowest moving pod. Why on earth, Ros wondered, did he always pick the slowest one? Was it something about postponing the moment of starting work as long as possible?

"Is there a reason for such early profanity, Moddam?" asked Lucas, who could never resist an opportunity to tease Ros. Ros smiled thinly before answering.

"The Met and Border Agency UK are feeling rather pleased with themselves this morning. They arrested a young French Algerian this morning called Rashid Henrik getting off the Channel Tunnel at St Pancras. It seems he had two pounds of Semtex stitched into the bottom of his backpack and the remote trigger to set it off in the same bag."

There was stunned silence, broken only by Harry's muffled expletive that he hurled at someone on the other end of his phone.

"How didn't they catch him in Paris? Or Lille - where did he get on?"

Ros rolled her eyes. "I'm not sure anyone's even asked that basic question yet. They're too busy crowing over their apprehension of a alleged terror suspect. There's celebratory phonecalls being conducted all over the Greater London area right now, and that particular bit of gloating was to inform us that Henrik is being brought to Thames House for questioning. No doubt after he's been paraded in front of a waiting line of reporters."

Ruth tried not to laugh. "So Harry's on the phone to whom? Border Agency UK's PR head honcho?"

"I suspect so," Ros sighed, "and I was told to expect him within the hour. Which means we'll be lucky to have him by lunchtime. The way they were carrying on you'd think we'd stuffed up and they'd caught the Cambridge Five."

Tariq cleared his throat. "Well, actually....."

Ros quelled him with a look as Harry marched out of his office. "I take it you've told them?" he asked Ros, who nodded. Harry rubbed his face wearily. "There's so much about this that doesn't feel right I hardly know where to start. For now we'll play along with this little charade. Tariq and Ruth, start working up his profile and Lucas - you're to meet your Algerian asset from Ealing. I want to know if there was anything in the works with a North African connection. Ros, you're to meet Henrik and his very happy minders at St Pancras. I do not want Thames House to become a roosting ground for reporters. And perhaps you can dissuade certain members of the Met from announcing that Henrik is on his way here. Feel free to tell them where they can shove their Scotland Yard board game while you're at it."

The team dispersed, leaving Ros and Harry standing closest to Harry's office. Ros was staring at Harry, a smile tugging at her lips.

"What?" Harry demanded.

Ros shrugged. "I had one of those board games, you know."

Harry growled in response: "Get down there, Rosalind."

*************

_Before I forget: some of you may have missed a fic I wrote for Valentine's Day, called 'Summer Interlude'. It is rated M and can be found by going to my profile page. If you're interested._


	2. Chapter 2

_**Same spoilers as before .**_

_**It's an exposition heavy chapter, but forgive me, the hype is necessary.**_

_**A huge thankyou to Hates Tea for answering all my questions about the Eurostar and the Chunnel so patiently. This chapter's for her x**_

_

* * *

_

Lucas lounged against the wall outside the library. The University College London campus was teeming with young adults, barely overgrown children experimenting with grown-up concerns. Abehsera, his contact, appeared from nowhere it seemed. He walked slowly towards the same square foot of wall to shelter from the rain, and pulled out a cigarette wearily.

"You saw the news this morning?" They only had a few minutes and Lucas didn't waste time with pleasantries.

The young man inclined his head slightly and took a convincingly long drag of what was surely not a prop piece in this little charade.

"The Algerian? I saw Mameui this morning, and nothing was said to say that he was one of us."

Lucas pushed. "What exactly was said?"

Abehsera shrugged. "Not a lot. Just that it would keep the coppers busy for a bit, right?" He turned to face his handler, but Lucas hissed and tried not to let his frustration show as he asked:

"Has there been any talk of new members? No-one new on the scene lately? No contacts from abroad, unusual post to the flat?"

"Nothing." The teenager's voice was flat as he worked the cigarette for all it was worth, savoring the last few puffs. "You know they make these shorter so that you....."

"...buy more, I know." Lucas cut him off. "So there's been no talk of anything out of Algiers, Morocco or northern Africa?"

"Nah, mate, nuffin'." Abehsera pushed off from the wall like a backstroker in reverse, and walked off into the rain. His handler wiped the drizzle from his brow and struggled to see the endgame.

* * *

Ros clicked sharply into the office where she had been re-directed for the fourth time. She suspected she was being played with, while an assembly line of press was arranged outside the Met's station near St Pancras. Ros hissed impatiently upon finding the room she sought was empty and headed for the stairs.

"Can't be that hard," she said softly under her breath as she climbed downstairs swiftly, "thinking like the local plods. Bet they've hidden him in the basement."

She found them behind the third door she tried, and summoned the woman who appeared to be interrogating the man behind the desk. "DCI Angelo? A word please. Outside." She flashed her ID and exited the room, not bothering to see that Angelo was following her. She knew that the CID girl would be if she knew what was good for her health.

Ros turned to face the 30s something high flyer who had clearly arranged for her wild good chase through the halls of the Met station. "There's a car waiting outside for Henrik to leave for Thames House. Except it's out the back and we'll be leaving immediately, not waiting until the brass is here to get their photo taken. While the bad guy gets pushed into a car by the scary spooks of Millbank fame."

Angelo's hackles were raised. "And how do you expect to get him out of here just by yourself?"

Ros withdrew her mobile from her pocket and started to press keys on the number pad. "There are men enough outside with the car, they'll meet me at the door."

Angelo set her jaw and turned on her heel to fetch Henrik. Ros smiled, pleased such a basic lie had worked so well and so quickly. To be fair, she did have a driver, but for all intents and purposes she was handling Henrik solo. It didn't worry her in the least, however, as she knew the safest passage for them both back to Thames House lay along the route of relative anonymity.

Ros had left her charge in the hands of the guards downstairs, while she returned to see Harry, who raised his eyebrows as she entered his office.

"Any trouble with the local constabulary?" he queried.

Ros rolled her eyes. "Nothing that Maxwell Smart couldn't have handled. It's amazing, they just assumed I had brought the whole of Thames House with me. I'm not sure that the 'softly, softly' approach is something they understand."

Harry permitted himself a rare smile. "I'm not sure that you were anything like 'soft' with them either, Ros, but that's why I sent you. Henrik downstairs?"

"Yes." Ros paused and spoke her mind. "He doesn't strike me as a typical terror suspect, Harry. I mean, why was the bomb still unexploded by the time he got out at St Pancras? Unless he was targeting one person, the amount of Semtex was hardly enough to hurt many people, if any, other than Henrik himself."

Harry nodded his assent. "The same things are troubling me, but what concerns me most is that it was a careless strategy from a man who is clearly no fool, at least based on what Ruth and Tariq have gathered thus far. But there is a money trail, and Lucas is swinging by Henrik's flat on the way back here with what the Section Q boys have found so far."

They were arranged around the conference table in the meeting room. Ruth sat immediately to Harry's left, a subtle difference in how things had shifted since they had formalized their attachment. No more looking when the other's face was turned. She gave him a small smile as she took her seat; a smile he acknowledged by gently squeezing her thigh under the table. It wasn't overtly sexual or even intended as anything more than a reassuring touch, but Harry found his heart beat a little faster as he watched her cheeks flush. It reassured him that so little response from her could still make him feel so giddy. He focused his attention on Lucas who had just entered, shaking his hair free of the rain which clung to it stubbornly.

"Anything interesting?" the Section Chief asked as he relucutantly withdrew his hand from his Section Analyst's knee.

"Well, a map of the Underground and some postcards I need Ruth's help with." He passed Ruth a small zip lock bag containing a few cards. "But Harry, he couldn't have done much with what he had in that bag, surely. And Abehsera didn't think anything was said that indicated he might be one of the North African kafi. He might be short spoken, but he rarely gets the important stuff wrong."

Harry and Ros exchanged a look and Lucas raised his eyebrows questioningly.

Ros filled him in. "We're also confused about the explosives, but there's a money trail - Tariq?"

Section D's resident techie got to his feet and grinned. "He'd never be an accountant this one. Messy finances. But a deposit of many, many pounds was made this morning, arriving in his bank account 'round about the time he got on the train in Lille - it was Lille, right?" He looked to Ruth for reassurance and she nodded. Strange the details that Tariq would forget but retain all sorts of others. The young man continued: "The money seems to come from a bank in South Africa, but the money then can be traced back to Morocco."

"So on the surface......" Harry began and Ros finished his sentence:

"it looks authentic, but there's a few maybes here I'm not crazy about. Ruth, what about Lille? Is there anything from French Intelligence to suggest that we're missing something and that this was a Tunnel attack?"

Ruth shook her head. "Henrik has dual citizenship, and in every way he's a model citizen. The French have no record of him on their files apart from some student activism when he was in Lyon studying at undergraduate level, but if I'm honest it's all a little too convenient. It's all so perfectly constructed. The money trail, the single young man in his twenties with only fleeting connections to radical orgnizations in Algiers? And the tunnel - such an obvious target! He reads like a classic fall guy."

Lucas looked dubious for a moment, but before he could speak Ros asked Ruth: "And there's no projected targets immediately beyond the station, are there?"

Ruth gestured in frustration. "Nothing that would be seriously harmed by such a small amount of explosives, no."

Ros sighed. "So we keep buffering against the same problem and....." she was interrupted by Tariq's distinct snicker.

"It's funny, because he was on a train and we keep 'buffering'....." he trailed off. "I like puns!" he protested feebly. Ruth spared him a smile as Ros finished her thought.

"We keep coming back to this problem that the explosives weren't exactly tailored for mass attacks. It's not as though there were ten of them coming through on the train all wearing them." She paused again. "Please tell me there weren't."

"If there were more of them, it's unlikely that they would have chosen to transport them via the Tunnel and not use them in an attack on the train itself." Ruth waved her right hand, pen in hand. "Of course, the conversation stopper is that Semtex is available here readily enough. Why bother doing something so risky as to transport explosives through the Chunnel of all things? They could get it through on a boat much more easily."

There was a moment's silence as Harry remembered another boat so many, many months ago, and the rest of his team grappled with the strange notion of Ruth referring colloquially to the 'Chunnel'.

"So why didn't he activate the bomb on the train?" asked Ros.

"Any cursory internet search on the tunnel reveals that an explosion of that size inside a train would have little impact. That was all of one of the most lauded achievements of its construction." Ruth shrugged. "The security analysis the Service did when it opened suggests several places where the tunnel is vulnerable to attack, and it's fairly accurate apart from several glaring typographical errors. But unless Henrik was targeting someone very specific, it's unlikely he would have achieved much beyond his own death."

"OK." Ros looked resolute. "Lucas, you and I will talk to him while Ruth and Tariq continue to follow the money and see how credible this is."

Harry had his head propped up by the tips of his left hand. "The problem is that we can't do anything with the fourth estate camped outside and every politician and his dog camped inside. Baying for blood, all of them. I've no interest in a media coup, whether this goes our way or not, but it will be hard for me to keep people out of the loop. We'll have to suffer company on this one, I'm afraid."

"Friends from upstairs?" Ros inquired quizzically.

"Friends? If you use the term very loosely, I suppose so. From upstairs certainly. And Whitehall too, I suspect."

Tariq cleared his throat. "I'm having some trouble getting hold of the footage of this whole thing, I'm having to retrieve some records and it's taking time."

"I want to see exactly how they apprehended Henrik," Ruth explained, "especially if this is a set-up."

"That's wise," said Lucas approvingly. "And who knows, there might be something in it we can feed to the press to keep them off our backs for a bit. Maybe the police stuffed up at some point."

The team dispersed, but Harry grabbed Ruth gently by the arm as she was last to leave.

"I wrote that report you know? The Security report on the tunnel?"

Ruth smiled sweetly, but with a touch of scorn. "Of course I know, Harry. Why else do you think I made fun of it?"

The surveillance footage eventually found its way to Ruth's screen and she settled down to watch it as Tariq tried to trace the exact source of the money from Morocco. She watched the disc of footage through once and then again. And again. It was forty minutes before she went to Harry. entering his office without knocking as he tried to disentangle himself from his conversation with the SIC and waited to have his full attention.

Harry hung up and faced the woman he so loved. Ruth held up the surveillance disc.

"Ros is downstairs, and I need you to see something."


	3. Chapter 3

_**Please read chapters 1 and 2 before proceeding. Spoilers and disclaimers as before.**_

_**A massive thanks once again to Tea Lady. I could not have written this fic without her assistance in answering my many questions about catching the Eurostar across the Chunnel. This is for her x **_

* * *

Lucas and Ros stood outside the interrogation room, watching Henrik on the monitors. The man had openly protested his innocence and was clearly terrified. He had only stopped shouting a few moments earlier, and even then, it seemed, because he was losing his voice. Now he clutched the steel table frantically, and shut his eyes tightly, trying to calm himself.

Ros regarded him coolly, as though she was witnessing a toddler throw a tantrum in a supermarket. But Henrik's behaviour was troubling her; his background, his demeanour...nothing made sense. It was not necessarily that everyone who protested they were innocent were telling the truth, but rather that it was unusual for someone to claim so after being caught with a backpack lined with Semtex.

* * *

Ruth waved the CD slightly, then crossed the room in a beat, reaching across Harry to eject the DVD drive on his computer. Harry looked up into her face, momentarily distracted by her proximity, and she flashed him a shy smile as they waited for the disc to load.

"It's the surveillance footage I asked Tariq to track down for me; it wasn't easy as the Met must have had the staff at St Pancras try and hide it all. Who knows why, but the point is that I think there's something rather disturbing taking place while there's that hysteria over Henrik taking place."

Harry turned his head a little as she stepped back. "When they arrest him, you mean?"

She nodded, with urgency, willing him to understand. The disc loaded and she bent back over the desk, fast forwarding to the point in the footage that troubled her. "This is the ten minutes or so preceeding his arrest, and the twenty minutes or so after it, while he was being asked questions. I want you to look at something happening in the background a few minutes after they stop him. Here."

The grainy footage from the St Pancras CCTV filled the computer screen. Ruth stood a little straighter and seized Harry's hand, placing it over the mouse so that he would be able to stop the footage when required. The Section Head wondered when he had left himself open to being directed in such a way, and reflected that he really didn't mind. But it was a fleeting thought, as he paid Ruth the respect of concentrating on what she had brought him.

"Watch what happens.... here, stop it," she instructed, "now, take it frame by frame."

On the screen, Henrik was being frisked by an agent while surrounded by several others, as well as two police officers. One agent remained sitting checking those still trying to clear the gates.

"They're obviously onto something being wrong, and everyone comes up and watches," Ruth continued, "and people still need to get through."

"Public entertainment on the job!" Harry murmured. "All the sharks smell blood."

"Exactly!" Ruth remarked triumphantly. "So they're searching his bag, find the Semtex, and more people start watching. Stop caring about other things. And so.....see this......"

She took the mouse from Harry's hand and scrolled the counter forward slightly. "There's only one man actually screening people coming through. Quick searches." She paused it and looked at Harry while events unfolded. "This man sets off the scanner but is waved through by the guard on duty. Waved through without being checked, because he's known to the watcher."

Harry pounced. "Who is the guard and who is the man?"

Ruth shrugged. "I'm not so worried about the guard. I think he was just being lax. But I suspect he wasn't bothered because the man exiting the gate was the guard on the Eurostar that Henrik arrived on."

A smile hovered around Harry's lips. "And you're about to tell me something rather interesting about the Fat Controller, aren't you?"

Ruth giggled. "The Fat Controller wasn't the guard, Harry," she admonished, "but yes, the guard is a man of little means and a penchant for painkillers called Tim Piggins. Who this morning received a sizeable bank deposit from what appears to be the same bank as Henrik's contributors."

* * *

Harry and Ruth met Ros in the hall between Section D and the interrogation room. It was a stretch of hallway perpetually darkened; the only light that filtered through was the quality of a late afternoon shadowed by constipated clouds and threatening thunder. An appropriate ambience for Thames House and Section D.

Ros set her jaw after learning of the transaction. "Lucas and I will find Piggins. But Harry, just because Piggins may well have carted something through that gate, it doesn't make Henrik squeaky clean. Despite the fact, I'm not convinced he was planning to detonate the damn thing, there are still things he needs to answer. He hasn't said anything, he's been too busy throwing his guts up."

Harry took a deep breath. "I agree that he isn't a classic terror suspect. This whole incident smacks of the Hindawi incident."

"The Jordanian from 1986 who duped his girlfriend into taking a backpack rigged with explosives?" Ruth looked confused. "He was Syrian, Harry, and I'm not sure this looks like a Mossad operation."

Slightly exasperated, Harry shrugged his shoulders. "No, but it is rather similar to the pregnant Irish woman who brought the backpack through. You're right Ruth, this is all misdirection, but we still don't know why our banal banker is being used as sleight of hand."

Ros grinned. "It's nice to hear that operation be used as an example in anything other than 'A Guide To Interrogate A Suspect'. They love to use that at the HR conferences. In any case, I'll leave Lucas to Henrik's panic attacks, and go find our Houdini."

*****************

Lucas took a deep breath, steadying himself for the task ahead. This was the part he did well in this job - the gradual earning of a suspect's trust, followed by the breaking revelation that he knew their secret. And finally, the reveal. When he forced his participatory audience to declare their cards that he might move to the next step of the performance. He blinked, straightened his shoulders and entered the interrogation room.

Henrik raised his head from the cold, steel table as Lucas crossed to his side. His tear stained face could not have been more pathetic and it was easy enough to Lucas to see him as being duped. He placed a hand on the young man's shoulder and smiled convincingly.

"Rashid. I just want to talk to you. Just you and I, no Margaret."

Rashid hiccoughed a little. "She's quite something, her. Bit scary though."

Lucas resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Ros hadn't been keen on her legend, but her impressively cold exterior in the interrogation room was always tempered slightly by her good looks. There was no doubt, however, that for a man like Rashid, such an attraction would only serve to make him more afraid of her. She was remote, foreign, untouchable. Which meant he had to be more accessible. He allowed his slow smile to reach his eyes, twinkling.

"She is. It can be useful in bars though, I'll admit." Build the rapport. Make him feel safe. Lucas anticipated Henrik's next remark.

"Is it a puller for the ladies? The spy thing?"

Lucas forced a laugh. "For the young and pretty ones, certainly."

Henrik smiled and his agitation began to lessen, his pose relaxing. "Never underestimate the public perception of Bond, eh?"

"Works every time." Lucas sprawled back in his chair, and Henrik mirrored him, lulled into a vague sense of security. The officer looked him in the eye and willed the clearly vain young man to tell the truth quickly. "Rashid, I want you to tell me about the prescription drugs in your backpack. We know they're not yours."

Henrik buried his head in his hands, but managed to keep himself together. "It's France, mate. It's not difficult to get hold of 'em, they're like sweets. My job's hard and the hours.....," he trailed off, and Lucas was quick to assauge his fears.

"I know what that's like." Lucas got up, and fetched the water from the table in the corner where he had asked the guards to put it. When used well, props were an important part of the performance. "Especially with all the travel you do for work, and the banking business isn't exactly in great shape...."

"Exactly." Henrik nodded frantically. "I have a friend of a friend, he organized for me to get them cheap, but he said I had to take them in the bag he gave them to me in."

Lucas couldn't believe how quickly the show was passing. "So they sold you the tablets and said you had to keep them in it. The tablets were in the top part of the bag, right?" Letting the suspect tell you small details you already knew.....

"Yeah, they were. He knew I was worried about getting back through the tunnel, even though it's heaps easier than the airport. But because I'm dark and, you know, I look the way I do," he gestured to his face, "they always look me and my gear over pretty thoroughly. So I did what he said."

Lucas smiled again. "OK, so your dealer gave you the backpack, Rashid. That's not great, but this is good. It means all you've done is smuggle some pills back into England, and it's not like you'll get in trouble for blackmarket drugs with Britain's stance on the EU." The weak joke got the chuckle Lucas looking for. "The point is, you're not trying to blow anyone up, right? So you're going to tell us everything about your dealer you can. Where you met him, what he sells, how you contact him....."

Henrik cut him off, eager to help. "He's Tim. They call him Tim the Pig. His number's in my phone, I can get it for you, but they took my phone....'

It was Lucas' turn to interrupt. "Tim? Tim the Pig?"

* * *

Piggins' house was clearly empty, so Ros slipped quietly in through the back door. She assessed the house and calculated that Piggins was out spending some of his money earned in his smuggling escapades. She rifled quickly through the desk in the small study and then the bedroom. With a sigh, she settled in the easy chair, the door to the flat visible to her, but not so that anyoe who entered could see her right away. But then a key turned in the lock and Ros moved slightly to her right, judging her footing so as to best surprise the man she immediately identified as Piggins. He was clearly inebriated, even though it was barely 11am.

Piggins stumbled slightly as Ros caught him from behind and clapped a hand over his mouth. He struggled in vain, Ros reflecting that it was almost too easy. But the skirmish was enough for her to miss the shadow looming outside the back door bare feet away, and she only came to her senses as sound of a lock turning broke the silence that followed Piggins passing out from her accurately placed stranglehold. Her only advantage lay in the knowledge that she could not be seen from the back door either, which meant that the intruder did not yet know that their target had company.

* * *

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	4. Chapter 4

It was as Ros was handcuffing Piggins to the foot of the bed that she heard not one, but two intruders enter through the back door. She rolled her eyes heavenward - as though the odds weren't already against her firmly enough! It was bad enough that she had taken her eyes off them for a moment, but she couldn't risk the train guard coming to his senses and making an ill timed dash for freedom. The job done, she crept once more to the doorframe, and waited for her visitors to declare themselves.

The two men were inside by now and they paused a moment before exiting the kitchen. A few muttered words, exchanged in a language with which Ros was unfamiliar, and then both men set off through the house.

Ros tensed behind the door frame of the bedroom and drew back, ready to strike. Both men were armed, and so was she, under the circumstances, but there was no time to add a silencer to her weapon and she was keen to get to capture at least one of the intruders alive.

The two men separated upon reaching the tiny hall; one heading for the front door, one entering the bedroom. Because the door opened from the right as one entered the hall, Ros was concealed behind its bulk as it swung inward, and she squeezed out from behind it as the intruder raised his weapon higher to shoot the now stirring train guard.

It was all over very quickly. Ros disarmed him first and then there was a struggle. Ros had her arms around his neck and they stumbled - first to the side, and then back, so that the intruder faced the door. But it had not been a silent struggle. The second man was just outside the doorway now, a backpack in his hand. Ros ducked behind her captive's body as he shouted and the second intruder raised his gun. She barely had time to see Jo nodding once and falling slowly in pain before registering that her captive was now missing part of his head at the back. Her gun pulled, she threw the body she was now propping up against the force of gravity to her left, where it collided with another bullet the second intruder had fired in Piggins' direction. Ros fired two rounds at the gunman, who had taken off upon realising that Ros was armed. Cursing, the officer jumped to her feet and sprinted after him

The few seconds' headstart were enough. Her quarry was in his car out the front of the house and driving away before Ros could get to him. She quickly memorised the plates and headed inside, breathing heavily as the adrenaline ebbed away.

Ros mopped her brow, and pulled the dead man's body out of reach from Piggins, by now almost conscious. She wiped the man's blood on his jacket, trying not to think too hard about how the bullet had ripped apart the back of his head. Having quickly checked her second, useless captive for weapons, Ros then pulled her phone from her pocket and dialled Thames House.

"Harry?" Ros winced as Piggins started to scream. "I've a couple of issues here."

* * *

Harry met Ros downstairs in the hallway immediately inside Thames House, wanting to see her before the rest of the team. She clipped towards him wearily and met his smile with a brief shrug of her shoulders. She bypassed the small talk.

"Piggins is downstairs, still screaming. Hitman Number One with two bullets in him is in the morgue and we should do a sweep of him sooner rather than later, I think. You never know - we might get lucky."

"Henrik positively identified Piggins as the man who sold him the pills, to Lucas," said Harry, walking towards the lifts. "So now that we have him here we might be able to finally work out what this is all about rather than picking the card this magician wants us to choose." He stopped, pressing the 'Up' button determinedly in the silence, then turned to Ros. "Are you......?"

Ros smiled - that small, Ros smile, a mix of resignation, sadness and a sneer.

"I'm glad there weren't three of them." Her only comment hung heavy between them as Harry reflected how close they came, so often.

They stepped into the lift and were silent as they rode it up to Section D. Stepping out of the lift, Ros took only a few steps before stopping her boss. "I'm sorry about losing the hitman, but at least we have Piggins. And there's that backpack - they had two of them there. One to kill Piggins and one to collect the bag, it looked like."

Harry nodded and motioned towards the pods. "You and Lucas best figure out how best to approach this man, then. I strongly suspect what he thinks he was bringing into the country may be yet another red herring for our benefit."

******************

For the second time that morning, Lucas and Ros waited outside an interrogation room, observing their suspect, preparing their approach.

"The strange thing is, I think because I was the one to get him out of that hovel alive, perhaps I should be the nice one this time around." Ros smiled mockingly at Lucas, who looked surprised to say the least.

"You not been getting enough action, Ros? By all means, flirt with him. Just remember that Tariq and I are here all day long to practice with, that's all I ask." He removed his watch and keys and placed them in the holding tray, then turned to look at his colleague. "I'd rather you flirt with him than me, if you think that's what it will take."

Ros nodded. "He's still pissed, remember? It's the fastest way, and right now fast is what we need. I think you should go in tough and I'll administer sweet solace which should do the trick. I doubt very much he'll want to go ten rounds with either of us, frankly."

Lucas cocked his head to one side. "Why they were so keen to bump him off, perhaps?"

Ros looked away from him and at Piggins, who was now openly sobbing. "That or his effusive displays of feeling. But I agree with Harry - he won't know what game he's playing. The best we can hope for is a lead on the real guys that might reveal what their endgame is."

Lucas raised his eyebrows. "So far, they don't strike me as chess players, Ros."

Ros shrugged and opened the door of the room, its grey interior raising her heartbeat as she looked her opponent up and down, on her turf, for the first time. She perched herself on the table coquettishly and introduced herself once again. Forget lying - this job was all about the greetings and the goodbyes.

* * *

As Lucas shouted and blustered his way through the interrogation, Harry stood outside and watched. Ros and Lucas were extraordinarily well matched as partners in interrogation, as they were both capable of playing either role. It was Lucas' abilities in the interrogation room that had first attracted Harry's attention when, as a young man in his early twenties, Lucas had displayed an outstanding ability to get close, quickly, to a target or informant. His skills translated perfectly to the task of extracting information from unwilling participants. Harry was filled with regret for the years the still young man had lost, but marvelled at how adept he was after all this time at manipulating a conversation to hear what he needed. Harry squashed his pride, telling himself that he had no right to feel such an emotion in Lucas.

There was a light touch on his left arm, and he looked down slightly to meet Ruth's gaze, allowing their fingers to meet briefly. He smiled warmly at her and waved slightly at Lucas.

"He's doing really well. This is the first time I've seen him do the harder interrogation since he came back."

Ruth followed his eyes into the interrogation room, watching Lucas at work. She smiled. "He hasn't been that animated in weeks. Even if it's just show, I like it when he gets worked up, passionate about things."

Harry turned to look at Ruth, who as usual had penetrated to the very core of what he knew to be true about Lucas. "So while we talk about Lucas as though he were one of our pets, was there something you needed, Ruth?"

Ruth blushed, but grinned back at him. She loved the way Harry disconcerted her when she flashed her bad habit of over analysing everything; it was as though he found it amusing rather than annoying.

"You asked me to tell you when we had better background on Piggins? Tariq's still chasing the money, hoping there's a clearer trail than what we had with Henrik, but I have managed to find out a bit about Tim the Pig. Careless enough that he does most of his drugs trade at Univ, which is....."

Harry finished her sentence: ".....where Lucas' contact is and every other member of his cell. Footage yet?"

Ruth shook her head. "I'm on it, but it's going to take a while, Harry. If you can get Lucas and Ros to get a location from him that would help." She turned to walk away, but Harry reached out and grabbed her arm. She looked at him quizzically.

"It's....errr, a domestic thing, Ruth. I was thinking about how much time we've been spending lately running to and fro between our houses, fetching things when one of stays over at the other's house and...."

Ruth looked at her shoes. "I understand if we can't do it as often, Harry." She looked up at him again and tried to smile. "It's just...it's been nice, having you..."

Harry laughed, seeing quite clearly that she was afraid the sleepovers were ending. "No, Ruth, I'm not saying we can't still have the inadequate three times a week we get. (His voice lingered on the adjective, implying that it was not the company that was inadequate, but rather the small amount of time available.) I was.... suggesting....that perhaps I might leave a suit and some shirts at yours and you bring some things to mine. When you come over tonight."

Ruth drew her breath sharply, not quite knowing how to react. Harry hurried on, sensing her discomfort.

"It's not...moving in or anything, just...we spend so much time dithering about in the evenings when we're done here and.....," he stepped closer, "I want to be spending that time with you, Ruth. Not in the car, with my driver."

Ruth tried to laugh, but inside she was in turmoil. How different this was from her last invitation of domesticity! George had swept her off her feet with his request for her to join him and Nico in their home, and here she was with Harry moving in tiny steps towards....something, anything, she knew not what. Ruth suddenly felt very old, and utterly unequal to the task. She looked up at the man now regarding her anxiously, and sighed.

"Harry, not now. We can talk about this later. Lucas and Ros are busy in there and Tariq and I have to find out what Piggins is playing at....just, not now, Harry."

She hurried away, her pumps clicking quietly against the tiled floor. Harry turned back towards the interrogation room and watched Lucas slam his fist down on the steel table, threatening Piggins with....who only knew what? He pinched the bridge of his nose, playing the short scene over and over in his mind - what could he possibly have done wrong this time?

His reverie was broken by a shout from inside. Ros was waving at the monitor, knowing he was outside. Piggins was vomiting violently, clawing at his back urgently. Lucas met him with the bin from the corner as a receptacle and then looked at Ros, who was gaping in horror at Piggins' back, where his T-shirt was now hitched up. She crossed the room to the door, and met Harry outside with fear naked on her face.

"I can't say for certain, Harry, but Piggins has his back covered in what looks like the first rash of radiation sickness. Either that or someone gave him some serious shellfish." She reached for the phone. "We'd better get a medic in here, now."

* * *

Please leave a review! It helps me write faster, truly :)

I know some of you subscrib to my stories and yet you never tell me what you like and what you hate - you're the people I want to hear from most.


	5. Chapter 5

_**Please review. This fic has been a bugger to write and I really need the encouragement to get to the end of it. I feel like I'm cheating on Harry and Ruth a bit! **_

************

Lucas clenched the underside of the bench in the back of the ambulance, the vehicle now hurtling through the streets of London. He was permitted to stay with the patient, but Piggins was in and out of consciousness while they had waited for the ambulance to get to Thames House. Lucas' mission was to find out just exactly what the guard had smuggled into the UK, presumably in his backpack.

The paramedics bundled out of the ambulance, and threw out the gurney with the frantic but well practiced movements of those who have seen it all. Lucas trailed after them, knowing that Ruth would have called ahead to ensure that all necessary measures were taken so that Piggins was treated quickly and discreetly. He still had interrogation to follow through with, and witholding medical treatment could prove very effective. Lucas knew himself just how much leverage that threat could give an interrogator.

****************

After briefing Ruth and Tariq quickly, and exhorting them to investigate any chatter regarding the attempt on Piggins' life, Ros stepped into Harry's office to confer.

"Lucas went with him in the ambulance, I presume?" Harry asked, turning away from his monitor.

"Yes," Ros answered. "We judged it best....under the circumstances. If he needed to threaten him, Lucas would work better, given the roles we were playing before. He does the angry man better than I would have expected." She cocked her head to one side, remembering again, a little surprised, at just how well Lucas had fitted into the bad cop routine. Harry nodded.

"It was good to see him at his best again." He paused, not quite knowing how much to confide in his Section Chief. Ros seemed to understand and she sighed.

"You worry about him, still." She sat down on his couch, crossing her legs and looking him straight in the eye, as was her custom. "Russia, Sarah......"

"....and this thing with me." Harry shrugged. "It was to be expected, but sometimes I have to lie to him, he knows that." He walked around from behind his desk and leaned against it, trying to find the words. He seemed to give up and turned to the matter at hand. "I'll be surprised if Piggins even knows exactly what it was he was bringing into the country. But we need to know who it was who sent him on this particular jaunt across the Channel so let's hope Lucas can get something out of him while the doctors aren't listening too closely."

Ros had stood up from the couch after realising that Harry had shut down on her. "Doctors are always too nosy for their own good, but nurses are worse, Harry. And they'll be swarming for Lucas. In any case, Tim the Pig won't have too long, I suspect. Whatever it was that caused him those burns, he won't outlive any attack he might have helped."

* * *

It hadn't taken Lucas more than 15 minutes to get the truth out of the guard. The doctor had dealt with Piggins and informed him that his burns would prove fatal, and Lucas simply followed up swiftly as the Pig swore his revenge. Unofortunately, he had little to go on. Piggins had been approached by a regular user at the college in Lille where he sold several times a week, but he had no name and could only give a description that could apply to thousands of students. He was about to check in with the team when his phone rang.

"Lucas?" Tariq's excited voice came over the phone before the older spook had time to get a greeting out. "You need to head over to Univ again, mate. Abehsera wants another meet. The alternate spot. At 3. So you'd better start moving so.....hang on, Ros wants a word."

Lucas smiled, the image of Ros standing over Tariq one he couldn't resist. He knew that Ros quite liked the scruffy tech boy, it was just that she found his youthful optimism and enthusiasm a little wearisome. Ros' clipped tones interrupted his smile as it crept towards his eyes.

"You do need to head to Univ, but what has Piggins coughed up? Apart from his lungs?"

"Very little that will help us find anyone who can tell us anything more. I have a description that I'll forward to Ruth. Perhaps she can get some hits from French Intelligence. But the big problem is that there was no meet for the package to be handed over. Piggins was to meet them tomorrow after a phonecall telling him where to go. And no, he didn't have a number, not even one for emergencies. You'd think he'd be more careful given it was his first time."

Ros sighed. "Yeah well, we're not always careful our first time around. Get over to Univ. His doctor's on orders from Ruth to let us know what's going on if she figures out what it was in his backpack that signed his death warrant. And do send that description to Ruth, we need everything we can."

* * *

Lucas waited impatiently inside the small meeting room of the Univ student centre. The alternate meeting place wasn't ideal, but as they had already met once that day, agreeing to Abehsera's terms had been the only option. However Lucas treated him to his face, the older man had a strong respect for this particular asset. Abehsera was one of those rare agents motivated by ideology and little else, with an unshakeable belief that the life he had been born into was wrong. At this thought, the teenager strode into the room and flung his backpack against the wall before slamming the door closed.

"Steady on, mate, they'll have someone in here...."

The teenager broke Lucas off. Now it was Lucas' turn to be admonished for the pleasantries.

"I've only got five minutes. And you've gotta get cracking, mate. 'Cause Rani tells me we've got ourselves some strontium since this morning and my chem's not that great, but that means there's some bomb making going on."

Lucas paused. The prospect of a dirty bomb was one that had not really been a real threat in the hazy days when he went to Russia in 2000, but in 2010 it was a very real danger. He eyeballed the teenager uncertainly.

"When? And where are they keeping the strontium?"

Abehsera pulled out his cigarettes and then remembered he couldn't light them indoors. Then he pulled one out anyway and waved it about in his agitation.

"I don't know when they're planning anythin' for, but I promise you that it's for Trafalgar Square. As to where - Vafa has it apparently. I don't know anything more." The teenager tucked his cigarette behind his ear, picked up his bag and walked resolutely out of the door, leaving a crestfallen Lucas in his wake.

* * *

Lucas had prepped the team over the phone, so that a meeting was in full swing by the time he had returned. It was almost exclusively Ruth's briefing and she had waited for Lucas to arrive before outlining the chemical implications of what Piggins had allegedly brought into the country.

"Strontium was one of the ingredients for a dirty bomb that was first bandied about when the weapon was talked about after 9/11." Ruth was standing, for a change, using her hands as she described the material they so feared. "It's a low-grade radioactive material that would set off the gates at St Pancras, for example, but it looks like talc powder. It's not surprising that Piggins didn't question what it was when it was shown to him in Lille - it looks just like cocaine."

Harry inclined his head slightly. "I'm only surprised he didn't sniff it."

Ros smiled. "I think you'll find Piggins was chosen specifically because he isn't a user of 'hard drugs'. Just prescription ones."

"Exactly." Ruth nodded. "Not to mention that if our friend the Pig had sniffed anything inside that canister, he wouldn't have made it across the Channel anyway. He'd have been dead by the time he got to St Pancras, certainly."

"Ruth, this is the gear that got the Russians so worked up in 2001, isn't it? They kept finding it in agricultural farming equipment, in canisters, ready to spray on crops?" Lucas felt stupid asking the question like a young trainee, but there were still gaps in his knowledge of the time he had spent away. Strange to be inquiring about history that took place bare miles from where he was being held, in all likelihood.

"That's the one." Ruth sat down at the desk again, feeling a little weak. It didn't matter how many times she described this scenario, it never became any more real to her. "The bomb is usually made out of an explosive, Semtex for example, about 10 lbs of it, so the blast itself isn't that big. Perhaps enough to kill ten people in the vicinity when it goes off. But the scenario you're describing - Trafalgar Square being the target - in seconds, depending on the direction of the wind, the plume could reach Whitehall. A minute later Charing Cross. The city would be next. In just half an hour radioactive smoke could reach London suburbs 10 kilometres away."

Harry shook his head, even as he cradled it in his left hand. "We've got contaminated air moving across a section of London and nobody would be aware that that contamination was there."

Ruth took up the narrative once again. "And they don't find out until after the scene is dealt with professionally. Maybe 24 hours pass before they understand the extent of the damage. The real outcome is that they decimate a city like London and make it uninhabitable. Economy destroyed. And because the material we're talking about is so easily dispersed......"

Harry once again finished the sentence of one of his team. "......it could spread even further and make the better part of the UK unliveable. "

Ros turned to Lucas. "Your asset's group? Does this fit in with their aims as far as you know?"

"Certainly the idea that bankrupting a country is often better revenge than a mass slaughter would appeal to them." Lucas rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "And the Russian connection makes sales of radioactive material to a terrorist group with its roots in North Africa quite plausible."

"Aberhsera's group. The Qatari." Harry paused. "They're a faction of that group with the unpronounceable French name aren't they?"

Ruth jumped in before Lucas could speak. "They're the offspring of the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, yes," she said, refusing the bait, but shooting Harry a small, surreptitious smile. "But they themselves were born in blood of the Armed Islamic Group, or the GIA. They focus more on the direct assault of state and civil institutions, financial powerbrokers and...the security services."

"And their attacks include targeting countries who they see as sympathetic to the Algerian cause." Lucas weighed in. "The UK is one of those countries."

Ros sighed. "Leaving aside revisionist history and the fact that "the Algerian cause" changes with the seasons, we know that Qatari fits this profile, Ruth?" The Section analyst nodded. Ros turned to Lucas once again. "Abehsera is good for this, you think?"

"Absolutely," said Lucas. "He's an impressive asset, Ros. And everything he's ever given us has been spot on. Tariq's looking into the background of Vafa, his work colleague at the community centre and especially given that both he and two of the other men who work there seem to be missing from work today....I feel like we're on the right trail. Abehsera's the right stuff, and regardless of what happens today he needs to be looked after."

"You like the ideologues, don't you Lucas?" Ros asked quizzically. Without waiting for an answer, she rose from her seat, the rest of the team following suit. "Ruth, Tariq - we need to know where they're making the damn thing. They know if they're handling the stuff they're dead regardless, but we need to find out how to get in wherever it is without exposing any of us to danger if we possibly can. It's a bit hard to break in wearing full assault gear and HAZMAT suits."

The team filed out promptly, but Ruth waited behind. Harry's heart leapt, thinking that perhaps Ruth was about to tell him she would be at his house with a packed bag after work - and then chastised himself for thinking of such a thing at such a time. Ruth smiled, a little sadly, as she read his usually impassive face and took his elbow gently.

"It's not about that, Harry. That can keep until later. It's about Ros. Is there any chance she was exposed to the strontium while she was trying to bring Piggins in?"

*************

_**Duh duh duh! Review please!**_


	6. Chapter 6

Lucas and Ros rifled through various photographs that came with files created over time. The Section Chief felt a pang occasionally as she came across Adam's signature at the bottom of a report - he had recruited Abehsera only a month before his death. Information compiled painstakingly on each member of Quatari as they knew it; members' biographies and monthly reports flicked through hastily in their search for information.

"Good file!" murmured Ros, skimming down one of the earlier reports on political tendencies of Abehsera's flatmates. "More thorough than usual, some of them have been a right proper mess."

"The Service is only as good as its records, Ros," Ruth said softly, as she approached the pair. "Harry wants to see you in his office. I'll keep scouring the files with Lucas and Tariq."

Ros stepped away to Harry's office, thinking nothing of it, even after she saw Harry's sombre face.

"Sit down, Ros," he said quietly. She complied and looked at him, waiting for an answer to her unspoken question. Harry walked around from behind his desk and tried to find the words.

"I just got off the phone with the doctor looking after Piggins. What he brought in with him on the train was sealed in a steel canister, but he did open it. Twice."

"So?" Ros asked. "What are you saying, Harry? That I might be infected?"

Harry was startled at her direct question so early in the conversation. "It's a remote possibility, Ros, but yes. If it is strontium, if there was anything on his hands, anything in the air......he didn't have time to open the canister in his house, for that we can be grateful, but....there is a possibility that your chances of developing cancer later in life may have increased. They can run tests...."

Ros cut him off. "Harry. Given the life expectancy of field agents in this department these last few years hasn't exactly been high, what makes you think that some stronger odds of developing cancer in twenty years' time will bother me so very much?"

"Just take the tests, Ros," Harry sighed.

"When the operation's over." Ros walked briskly to the door and then turned around, softening her tone. "But thanks, Harry."

Her boss sighed again. "I'm sorry to say I didn't think of it. Thank Ruth."

"Of course," Ros smiled.

* * *

Tariq leant back in his chair and stretched. "I can't get any further with the money trail, I'm afraid. I've traced it to Morocco, but that's it. Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang."

"In terms of hideaways, I can't find much." Ruth looked up at Ros and Lucas, who were still passing sections of the file between them as they absorbed identities and details. "The obvious answer is to check out the community centre where Vafa works - he's the one who Abehsera said had the material last."

Ros and Lucas looked at one another.

"Makes sense," Lucas said.

"Here." Tariq passed him a USB. "Get the contents of the hard drive. Make yourself useful."

Ros smiled. "I might end up liking the scruffy kid after all."

* * *

Ros parked the Lexus across the street and a few hundred yards down, while Lucas pulled the kit from the back seat. Having guns again in the field was quite the novelty for him; personal firearms had been phased out in Section D within a year or two of him starting with the Service and had reappeared a few years after his capture in Russia. He loaded the gun cautiously and passed it to Ros - who immediately emptied and then reloaded it. Lucas smiled into his window as he checked his own equipment; it was not that Ros didn't trust him, it was that she trusted herself more. And he didn't blame her. There was a confidence that came in the ritual of making sure a firearm was ready for action, a security in the knowledge that the dead weight of a gun would fire if needed. He slipped a knife in his pocket and then turned to his partner in arms.

"These guys will be dead inside of a week or so after handling this stuff, so it's possible that if they made the bomb here there could be traces in the air, right?"

Ros smiled and opened her door. "Let's hope they were lazy enough to leave us a different calling card if they were here."

They walked towards the front driveway of the community centre, which had already closed for the evening. Ros grimaced.

"I don't like how much notice we might be giving anyone inside, Lucas."

"All the lights are off - d'you really think they're all hunched inside waiting to pop out and sing 'Happy Birthday'?" Lucas stood on his toes, trying to see if the fan on top of the roof was circling. It was usually a good indicator that a building was occupied when the exhaust fan was making its revolutions. "None of the fans are on, so I doubt there's anyone in the building at least. Maybe out the back?"

"More informal," Ros agreed and they turned to walk around the block. "Tariq's map had a timber yard facing off at the back yard of this place - we can scout from there I think. Back door might be the best way in."

"I'll resist the urge to make jokes about back entrances and surprises," said Lucas softly, but he heard Ros' chuckle from in front and he jogged to catch up to her stride.

They scaled the fence between Grace's Timber and the outside world with relative ease. Sunset was taking over and Lucas cursed the darkness. It might make them more invisible, but it also made things much harder to explain if they were caught. They walked quickly through the yard and found an easy vantage point through a hastily mended fence.

"The timber man is foolish. Broken fences will get him into trouble," Lucas murmured as he pulled out the binoculars.

"Trouble like facing off properties with terrorists? " Ros pulled the glasses from his hands and adjusted the magnitude. There were a few moments of silence before Ros wriggled through the fence, Lucas following behind her, and then they set off towards the building.

"I don't know about women, Ros - but a shed is a pretty good place for a guy to hide something," Lucas pointed at the structure in question as Ros went to work with the skeleton key. She frowned and then busted the door open.

"It doesn't surprise me that you want to search the shed, certainly. Give me the USB and I'll deal with the hard drive."

The exchange was made and they separated. It was with little difficulty that Lucas gained entry to the shed and found a mechanism similar to the one Ruth had shown them in the briefing. There it sat, miserably solo on the workbench, but the canister Piggins had described was nowhere to be seen.

And then the door to the shed opened and Lucas looked into the eyes of two Quatari operatives. He barely had time to sigh.

* * *

The only warning Ros had received of the Quatari intrusion had been the two men speaking in an Arabic dialect (she couldn't identify which) as they walked beneath the window of the office she was searching. She gambled on them not shooting Lucas on sight and pushed the window sash high enough that she could escape out the side of the building. Ros fell hard as she clearly heard the two Quatari men laying into Lucas and she winced in sympathy, then held her breath. Lucas groaned. He was still alive.

Ros assessed the yard quickly. From where she was, she had no hope of sneaking up behind the two men, nor could she see how badly hurt Lucas might be. Perhaps most importantly, she had no way of knowing where the strontium might be; the equipment she and Lucas had to check likely hiding places was only capable of identifying nuclear material at a range of a few feet.

One of the two men was shouting at Lucas - Ros recognized him as Vafa, the last man known to be in possession of the strontium. The other man was unknown, certainly not anyone who had come into contact with Abehsera over the last year or so.

Ros brought her phone out and dialled Thames House quickly under cover of the noise being made in the shed, Ruth's line.

"Ros?" Ruth was business-like, assured.

"Ruth, Lucas and I have been split up at the centre and he's being held by two men, one of whom is Vafa. We'll need a Broken Arrow unit on stand-by for any nuclear fall-out."

Back at Thames House, Ruth waved to get Tariq's attention. "Do you have a plan, Ros? Or do I need to get Special Forces down there?"

Ros retreated into the bushes further as Vafa strode out into the garden. "I don't yet, but you can't get the CO19 down here. Not until I know where the bloody strontium is and how quickly these two renegades can release it."

"Fair enough." Ruth had scrawled 'GET HARRY' on a post-it by this stage and shoved it in Tariq's face. He dialled Harry, who moved quickly to the Grid, where Ruth already had Ros on speaker. "There's two of them", Ruth said quietly by way of explanation to her boss and lover, "and they've got Lucas."

Ros broke in. "I can hear Lucas talking and at any minute, one of them will come and search the centre, with it unlocked. That's my best chance of getting Lucas and the strontium. I'll call you back, just get that Broken Arrow unit down here and some transport for our two friends. It's too bloody windy."

Ros hung up abruptly, leaving Ruth looking at the phone and Tariq looking blankly at Harry.

"You heard the woman," said Harry, inclining his head. "But if Ros hasn't called back in ten minutes, reposition the satellite so we can get a read on who's where."

* * *

Ros shoved the phone back into her pocket and waited, watching. Vafa appeared from the shed once again, this time dragging Lucas by the elbow. For now, the spook seemed to be playing along as a foolish thief; his protests as he and his captor approached the house all part of the ruse. Ros waited until they were inside the house before making her move, dashing behind the huge pile of firewood immediately to the shed's left, between it and the main building. The unknown man walked out of the shed too, gazing toward the now open back door of the centre. Ros seized her moment and rushed him, her stranglehold choking him silent as he flailed about uselessly. Momentarily, he went limp and she heaved him over her shoulder in a fireman's hold, barely staggering back towards the firewood.

"You never leave your back exposed like that, silly," she chastised the unconscious villain, panting. Vafa and Lucas had not yet reappeared but she could hear them. Ros gambled and made for the shed, grabbing a lean, but rounded stump of branch from the firewood heap. She fell inside, almost comically, as a slapstick character of old, praying that the door was quivering with the wind and not because she had nudged it as she flew past.

She breathed deeply, adrenaline coursing through her, peering slightly through the crack of the door made by hinges. Only Vafa was returning, and she was briefly still, terrified for Lucas. She gripped the wood, smooth and hard beneath her anxious fingers and shrank back against the shed wall, as thin as she could be. Vafa was calling, calling for the other man - -

Ros struck, just as Vafa knew something to be wrong. He caught the wood en route to his face and kicked out. His leg was caught by Ros, who sent him flying, the wood still in his grasp. This time it was Ros who used her leg, to wind him so that he lay on his back, unable to move, his eyes aflame, as she bent over and pulled the wood from his limp fingers. He was still kicking, jerking, as she rolled him onto his stomach and handcuffed him, before she dragged him to the side of the shed and propped him up.

"Well, that was startlingly easy. You're no better at kung-fu fighting than you were this morning, are you?" She slammed his head against the steel, ignoring the shouted threats and curses as she proceeded to tie up her first victim behind the firewood.

Piggins' backpack lay only a few feet away, and she pulled it with her over to the side of the centre, once again grateful that it was she and not Lucas who had been carrying the equipment. The nuclear detector went off like a child on Christmas morning and then she sprinted for the centre's back door, hoping that the last player was still alive inside.

He was. Lucas was half free of his constraints but still gagged and his eyes opened with relief as Ros entered. She pulled the handkerchief free of his mouth and he panted his thanks before saying, in response to her cool smile, "I won't be living this down, will I? Single handedly, Ros?"

"Single handedly, Lucas." She pulled the ropes from his feet and he pulled his hands free and flexed them.

* * *

The Broken Arrow unit had been first on the scene; the prisoners could not be removed until the strontium was on its way back to government labs. They had ascertained quickly that although the can had been opened, there was no contamination of the area. Had they started making the bomb, presumably within minutes of their return, it all could have ended rather differently.

"Minutes," said Lucas to Ros.

"Hmmm?" asked Ros, looking up from her mobile screen. Ros often used these moments to clear her phone's memory of extraneous details.

"Today was a day where we made it by minutes. Sometimes it's hours. Or seconds. Today it was a matter of minutes."

Ros nodded and snapped her phone shut. "And sometimes we miss by the same margin. Today the numbers were in our favour."

She paused, that slightly awkward silence in which they both knew how close they had come to a failed mission. It was Ros who broke it, gesturing toward towards the road.

"I'm going to call Harry, let him know we'll be out of here soon."

Lucas nodded, and she walked away, leaving him restless and anxious. This was his least favourite part of the job, the waiting after safety resumed regular programming. Uncertainty still lingered in his mind and in the air, which so easily could have been contaminated. The two prisoners were now gagged themselves as well as bound. Lucas was massaging his wrists when the two CO19 officers walked towards him, holding their helmets and still wearing their protective clothing.

"We're gonna take these two down to the Heap," the first of them said, referring to the Special Branch holding facility. He and his colleague flashed their IDs. "The van's out the front - would you mind helping out?"

"Sure," Lucas shrugged. "We haven't quite got the all clear to leave yet."

It was Vafa that Lucas dragged to his feet and pulled the gag from his mouth. It was Vafa who started cursing policemen and England and the West. It was Vafa who kicked Lucas several times between the yard and the van. Lucas smiled, thinking it was the closest Vafa would ever come again to freedom.

But as he wrestled with Vafa before locking him into the van, the Quatari man began to curse out Ros and then spat in Lucas' face. And suddenly Lucas was back in a cold, concrete prison with Darshavin spitting in his face after cursing in a Slav dialect with which he was not familiar.

When asked later, he could remember nothing more. Just the dark, and Vafa's eyes, and the violent joy that coursed through him as he slammed the captive's head against the back door of the van. He couldn't remember the CO19 officers shouting or Ros' bellowing as she ran to his side and wrested his hands from Vafa's neck. He did register the blood, so much of the blood, running everywhere and its smell permeating the air with its bitter, iron smell. But he didn't remember the way his captive dropped to the ground like a sack of potatoes and only the reflection of his manic eyes in the side mirror of the van stayed with him as one of the CO19 officers pulled him away.

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_**Please review! The next chapter is all about the personal.**_


	7. Chapter 7

He had been bundled into a car by Ros and swept from the scene before the squad leader of the CO19 team could be called to the scene. How much time had elapsed he wasn't sure, but here he was, cleaning up at a sink in the men's. An evil monotony that regularly took place during a mission that had gone wrong somewhere. He hated washing and cleaning, it was such a tedious habit of living things that they needed to clean themselves. Lucas tossed aside the towel and pulled on the clean t-shirt. He packed up the soap and toothbrush and crossed to his locker. And suddenly he was back at the scene and blood was everywhere....

His breathing eventually calmed and Lucas rested with his back against the lockers. There was much to be thankful for back in England, not least was the ability to recover from the crippling panic attacks and flashbacks without calling attention to them. Being alone was hard to come by in a Russian prison, at least alone in person. (Alone in one's heart and mind was quite a different matter.) For the moment he was alone in self here in England. It was an ugly paradox that he needed the silence during the day in his work where he couldn't get it, and needed the company at night where he couldn't find it. Lucas bounced his head back against the cold aluminium - there was no balance in any part of his life; his sole purpose for being remained, as always, his job, his country. It might be enough to get him through tonight, and tomorrow, and next week. But would it be enough next year? The one after? He was still young and the years stretched out in front of him empty but for his anger and insomnia. Poor enough companions for a man in his prime. Perhaps he would get lucky and die young, like so many in this Section. He grimaced. Some life he had planned for himself now he was home. He was hoping to die young.

Outside, Ruth waited patiently on one of the two metal chairs that had somehow ended up in the corridor. It was cold and dark and she shivered, then wincing as she heard the slam of the locker door yet again. She waited for Lucas to put his public face back on before he emerged from the mens' room, hoping that when he did she might be able to penetrate the facade that was finally slipping. She gathered her courage to confront someone she loved and admired. Since returning, she had come to accept that the people she worked with passed for her family. Lucas was family, and he needed her help.

The door slammed and Lucas strode out, stopping short as Ruth stepped out of the shadows. He tossed his bag onto the floor in frustration.

"I should have known Harry would send a welcome party to to do his bidding. His office? Now?"

Ruth extended a placating hand, flushing, and he reached down to pick up his bag, ashamed of what he had implied. Ruth was far from a lap-dog and he was usually far from spiteful. Lucas sighed and began to apologise before Ruth cut him off.

"I'm here for you, Lucas." She paused. "There's a man in intensive care and Ros is taking tests to see if she was infected at Piggins' earlier today and Harry is out taking care of things. So the welcome wagon is mine, I'm afraid. And even if it didn't behove me to come down here and check on you as part of the team, I'd still do it anyway."

Lucas looked up quickly. "I know that, Ruth."

She stepped closer and smiled. "We're all worried, Lucas. We have been for months since before....", she faltered, as she always did when she tried to speak about coming back. She took a deep breath. "Since before I came back. Ros, Jo, Malcolm even - all worried about you, not knowing what to say, how to help you."

Lucas nodded slowly. What was he meant to say? Apologise for being surly since he had lost 8 years of his life? For making his peers occasionally uncomfortable? The irrational anger surged through him once again and Ruth stopped as she was about to put her hand on his arm. She stepped back slightly.

"It's not your fault, Lucas. I've seen the files - what little is in there. You couldn't have stopped them from taking you. And I know how it feels to lose years of your life, I really do." She shrugged. "I know I wasn't buried deep in a concrete hell, alternately suffering in solitary or being beaten. I can't understand that and I'm... so sorry for all of it. But I do know what it's like to lose everything you love in just one day. In one moment."

He breathed deeply. "You don't need to compare notes, Ruth. I know you have lost greatly. Ros told me what happened - at least everything that happened that she knew. She feels more guilt over your leaving than you will know, or more than she knows, even. And that was before you returned. But no, it's not the same."

"Ros too, Lucas. We've all lost so much to this job. Every person who has worked here these last years has lost so, so much. And that's just those of us still here. Harry...."

She had been putting off saying Harry's name, knowing that her listener would have a Pavlovian reaction when she did. Lucas exploded.

"Don't, Ruth! I don't want to know about Harry and what he might have lost!"

Now Ruth raised her voice. "He can help you, Lucas. You can get the help you need, the counselling from the people who have worked with officers who have been through anything similar. There are others, you know. There are ways to live with this."

Lucas grasped the handle of his bag more firmly. "Oh yes, I know the [i]services[/i] (his voice dripping with sarcasm) this friendly, caring, sharing Service offers. And I know what I might be left with at the end of it."

Ruth shrugged again. "It's better that you have whatever you might be left with after getting help than waiting to see how your career implodes if you keep on as you have."

Lucas started to storm off. Ruth called after him. "What if you do something where Harry can't help you, Lucas? Something so big and terrible that you're left ...."

Her voice trailed off as Lucas approached her. Ruth was simultaneously scared rigid and impressed as he glowered at her. She suddenly wasn't so surprised that people in the field were frightened of this not-so-gentle giant. But she stood her ground. "What if you're stuck in a hole Harry can't bail you out from?"

"What, like 8 years in a Russian prison? Heaven forbid that Harry can't get me out of something!"

He was shouting and Ruth placed a hand on his arm now. "Harry didn't beat you and torture you and keep you in Russia, Lucas. It wasn't his fault any more than it was yours. You lash out at Harry because you can't punish the people who hurt you so much."

Lucas stormed off for the second time in as many minutes. "Thanks ever so much for the pop psychology lecture, Ruth." He kept walking, hearing Ruth running behind him. "I think I'll cope without what Harry and the Service are throwing at my head. I just don't trust them any more."

Ruth grabbed him from behind and flinched as he dropped his bag and seized her arms. She spoke angrily, her voice shaking. "Look at yourself, Lucas! You're reacting to me as though I'm someone trying to hurt you! In the field! It's me!"

Her eyes flashed and he could see that behind her anger, she was frightened. Really frightened, as though he might hurt her. He dropped he quickly and turned away, the shame coursing through him. He saw his mother's face and covered his face with his hands, hearing Ruth from behind him. The woman who most reminded him of her.

"It's allright, Lucas, because it's me. But what if it was an asset? A girlfriend? Someone who really mattered?"

His breath slowing, Lucas turned to tell her she did matter to him, but she was already walking away.

"Harry's at your house, Lucas. Go and meet him there."

She walked up the stairs, pushing past two people from Section M who cast her looks of confusion as she shook and barely held the tears back. She hurried into the ladies' on the floor above, thankful only that she held off her reaction until Lucas was no longer near. It was a reaction she hated in herself, this response to anger and fear. But as she gasped for breath in a toilet cubicle, praying that no-one came in and heard her, she was only glad she had said her piece. The rest was up to Harry and Lucas.

And then she almost laughed. Now she _had_ to fix things with Harry, so that she heard how things went at Lucas' flat. She couldn't chide Lucas for dodging the hard stuff when she herself was avoiding Harry. It was time to face the fear and practice performing the pass.

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**_Please review - no, really, please! PM me if you don't want to leave it here. One chapter to come._**


	8. Chapter 8

_**So here it is, the final chapter. I really hope this plays true and would LOVE your feedback, even if it's negative. I accept anonymous reviews so even if you do not have an account, you can still tell me what you think.**_

_**This is going to sound terrible, but I suspect this story really does read better all in the one sitting. Multi chapter fics aren't really read like that, so some of the overarching ideas might not come through. I hope they do and if you have time, I hope you read the whole thing all together.**_

Lucas took his time getting home, taking the most circuitous route possible. He had no intention of making things easy for Harry nor did he have any idea what he would say when he saw him. Their always difficult dynamic seemed only to complicate by the mission. For all he knew, this last mess couldn't be covered up. Another thing for Harry to have over him since he returned.

Eventually, his legs tired and it was close to midnight. He strolled up the garden path, placing bets inwardly that Harry would be waiting in the kitchen rather than his poky living room, when there was a noise behind him. He turned, ready to strike, but Harry took a prompt step back and let Lucas recognize him for who he was. Harry was silent and Lucas simply turned and headed for the front door.

"You weren't waiting for me inside? Am I out of coffee?" the younger man asked, deliberately not looking back.

"I thought it rude, under the circumstances," his boss rejoined, quickly following through the heavy corinthian model door held open for him. Lucas almost smiled.

"Oh dear. Doesn't that sound ominous?" Lucas led the way through his tiny townhouse and waved carelessly at the living room, where it was warmer. He tossed his satchel and coat aside and followed Harry inside.

"Are you really going to start with sarcasm, Lucas?" Harry's voice was weary but steely underneath his fatigue. Lucas sighed.

"Oh, do take a seat, Harry. I insist."

Now Harry sighed, but he took the offered seat. Partly because he did not want either of them to lose their temper too quickly, but also because he really was very tired. And the day wasn't over yet.

"You'll be happy to hear that the man you attacked - "

"The terrorist, you mean!" Lucas interrupted, but Harry continued as though he had heard nothing.

" - is alive and in a stable condition. Luckily for you, the CO19 squad leader owes me quite a large one and I own his boss too. Which means no-one is prepared to dispute the official statement you will give tomorrow and that is that the man attacked you and in the struggle he hit his head on the back door of the van. We will find a way to use the head trauma to our advantage, should he live. Which is still not certain, by any means. But you retain your job, Lucas."

Lucas got his feet and went to the window. "Thanks ever so much, Harry. Sorry to have caused any trouble. Now I really have a spot of star-gazing I need to get back to."

Harry remained seated but it was time to declare his hand. "Enough, Lucas. You retain your job on the fulfilment of one crucial condition."

"Is this where Jewel and Tring are offered? How long, Harry? A month? Three months?"

"No." Harry was still seated and his tone, suddenly gentler, made Lucas stop twitching the curtain for a moment. "A different arrangement. Every Friday morning, for as long as Diana Jewel deems appropriate, you will drive to Tring and spend a long weekend there. In whatever therapy she thinks fit. I understand there are others who have been held for long periods with whom she wants you to spend time."

Lucas turned and looked sharply at Harry. "Have many of them been held for eight years in Russia?"

Harry shook his head. "That's not completely the point, Lucas. But in any case, you'll have to go to find out, won't you?" He smiled wryly and Lucas took a step toward him, his anger flaring again suddenly.

"The problem is not my eight years in Russia, Harry! The problem is that you lie to me! Over and over and always. Every time. When I asked you about Sugarhorse, after I first started having memories of interrogation. When I told you about Darsharvin and what he knew about Basel. You LIE, Harry! I'm not sure you know what truth is anymore."

By now, Lucas was towering over his boss, who was feeling a certain amount of fear throughout this last speech. Harry had stood his ground in the face of far more frightening people than Lucas North, and he did not really fear that Lucas would strike him, although he certainly seemed ready to hit something. He knew that in some ways, Lucas was too far gone to appreciate logic in his current state, but he used it now because it was his greatest weapon. This was the argument he wanted Lucas to remember when he lay awake at 3am on a weeknight.

"Lucas, when you confronted me with Darsharvin's assertion about Basel, you had only just come clean about Sarah Caulfield and were showing every sign of several serious mental health....difficulties. Was I really wrong to choose not to confide in you then?"

"You had been using ten dollar words to explain that I was upset, certainly."

"And then," Harry went on, "with Sugarhorse. You know why I couldn't tell you at the time, Lucas. I had not confided in Ros either. it was not personal to the extent you believe."

There was silence as Lucas pondered what he knew to be true, despite his irrational anger. If he had been Harry, he would not have confided in him about Sugarhorse. Especially given how recently he had returned. But still, it rankled. Harry's voice broke through his thoughts.

"My lying to you, Lucas, or to any other member of my team, is not for own personal amusement. But rather for your safety and that of your colleagues. And for that of the people we serve. In this job, Lucas, we lie. To each other, to assets, to those we love. That's what the job is. And if you can't cope with that, then you're in the wrong job. Although," here he gave a wry smile, "I doubt any job or any boss is likely to tell you the truth, Lucas. A barman will lie to you and tell you the bottom shelf whiskey is gone so they can sell you the single malt."

"So that's how you developed a taste for the good stuff, then?"

"We'll leave it at that, yes."

"This is the only way to keep my job?" Lucas splayed his hands, suddenly tired of arguing. Part of the reason he was so angry with Harry was that his boss usually had him in checkmate before anything started.

"The only way, Lucas. You will probably never again feel like the man you were, but you should...move on, to use the modern phrase. I want you at your BEST, Lucas. I watched you today in that interrogation room and remembered why we chose you among men. People instinctively trust you." He spoke more angrily now, standing to emphasize his point. "But at the moment, you can't trust yourself and you're no good to me this way. Enough."

Harry wondered if he should leave it there, but Lucas spoke before he could make for the door.

"This...arrangement. It's going to leave staff a bit thin on the Grid, isn't it? We're hardly fully charged as it is."

"I'm bringing in some new people very soon. New areas of specialty, new focus for the Section. It was what I was working on this morning. Before all daily hell broke loose."

There was a pause, both men thinking very different things. Harry spoke first.

"How did you know I'd be here? Ros was at the hospital."

"Ruth." Lucas furrowed his brow. "Why was Ros at the hospital?"

"She was having some tests done, to make sure she wasn't exposed. To the strontium."

"Is she....?" Lucas trailed off and Harry shook his head.

"As far as we know, she's OK." He paused. "Ruth and Tariq were busy planting stories so that Abehsera won't lose his cover." He paused again. "Lucas, how did you know I'd be here?"

Lucas met his gaze for the first time in several minutes. "Ruth....was intuitive. She tried to - talk sense into me. Wanted me to listen to you. I'm not sure I was very kind in return."

Harry just smiled slightly and gathered his coat. "It's no coincidence that her name is Hebrew for compassion."

"Actually,"Lucas stayed seated, "there was a woman on my team in Russia who liked to tell me that Ruth, as its English derivation, means friend."

"Your team?" Harry queried.

"Of interrogators." Lucas straightened to his feet also. "She wanted me to think of her as one. Needless to say, Ruth does a better job of making her case."

Harry made for the door. "I'm sure she'd be elated to hear it."

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Ruth waited once again for one of the men in her life, this time as she tried to build the fire in Harry's living room hearth. She had originally been at home for an hour or two, but decided she didn't want to wait until the next day to make her explanations. She had just struck the match when Harry's key turned in the front door lock. Ruth dropped the match on the newspapers and kindling and watched them blaze instantly, her inner pyromaniac thrilling. She reached for a piece of firewood, not looking up as she said loudly: "There's milk in the fridge."

Harry wandered in, smiling. "Why on earth are you bothering with that fire? Let's build the one upstairs, we'll need that one more."

She looked up, bemused. "And that implies - what?"

Harry's lopsided smile was twitching. "Nothing. Unless you want it to mean something." He looked serious for a moment. "I'm glad you're here. I wasn't sure you would be."

Ruth tried to stand up but stumbled a little, her legs having temporarily gone to sleep. Harry lunged and caught her and then croaked slightly, grimacing as he straightened up. "Oh God, Ruth. We're both getting old here, I think it's time to tell the truth."

She sighed, but didn't pull away. "I'm sorry I was twitchy about what you offered this afternoon."

Harry walked over to the lounge and resisted the urge to tap the back of it, so that she would join him. She remained standing where she was, knotting her hands and looking anywhere but at him.

"It's just that....we move in such tiny increments, Harry. For me to bring a bag and stash some things here and for you to leave a razor and clean shirts at mine...it's all so...."

Her voice trailed off and Harry stayed where he was, not sure what was happening. "Are you saying - you'd rather we moved in bigger steps, Ruth? I match your stride, follow you...."

She interrupted him. "That's part of it, Harry. It's always ME who takes the steps, sets the pace. I want to know what you want! These last weeks have been wonderful, but you said it yourself - we're.... ageing."

Harry resisted the urge to smile and make the joke that came to his lips and instead got to his feet and stood in front of her, waiting. She met his gaze and spoke again.

"This is all so......reminiscent of a first relationship. And it isn't, far from it, for either of us."

Harry shook his head and took her hands in his. "Now see, there I beg to differ. It might not be for you, Ruth, but it feels very much like it for me. If you need to know what I want, then I will try and tell you more often. And, for now, I want you to bring a bag and stay here more often. Is that enough? For now?"

Ruth nodded. "For now. So it's a good thing I brought a bag with me." She smiled. "Could you bring some firewood up with you please? I'll go get a fire started up...there."

"In the bedroom." He smiled.

"Yes." Ruth rolled her eyes. "In the bedroom."

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She was climbing into bed when Harry began undressing and he sat on the bed to pull off his shoes. They had been mostly quiet in the hour since they talked and given they both had to be up in less than six hours, their energy was wearing thin. It was Harry who spoke as Ruth switched the lamp off on her side of the bed.

"Ruth."

"Mmmm?" She was already lying down.

"Do you remember those nights? On the Grid, late, when it just us?"

Ruth rolled over, surprised at this sudden reminiscing. They didn't usually talk about the time before her exile.

"Of course I do." She was suddenly fiddling with her ring, wondering what Harry was driving at. "I....enjoyed it, mostly. I wish we had spoken to each other more often then we did. But I liked those evenings."

"So did I." Harry was in his bedclothes by now and he swung his legs into the bed, his weariness on his face and in his muscles. "The best part, for me, was getting to say goodnight to you. It was, embarrassingly enough, the highlight of my day, more often than not."

There was quiet for a moment. Harry switched off his lamp but stayed upright, watching Ruth play with her ring. He covered her hands with one of his and she stayed still.

"It was usually mine too, Harry," she said quietly. "I still love it, even though we usually say it differently nowadays."

Harry laughed quietly and then took a deep breath. "I still love it, too. But my point is, saying goodnight to you now is far from my favourite moment of the day. We have better moments now."

Her eyes filled with tears and she pulled him down onto the pillows so she could hold his face.

"I know." They moved about until he was almost holding her, his arm draped across her body; that awkward pose in bed that is so impossible to pull off all night and only happens on film and in the heads of overly romantic writers. For some reason, tonight, it felt the proper thing to do.

It is not easy to sleep in the arms of a lover, but that night, for Harry and Ruth, it was not difficult at all.

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He had managed a shower and a meal and even done a load of laundry. The moment he had been dreading was here, and Lucas knew he had to sleep. Or at least try to do so.

He felt better since talking to Harry. His boss obviously still wanted him and this was a declaration of faith Lucas hadn't felt since that night when Harry had told him he was welcome back in Section D. But the darkness of his mind and his memories was overwhelming. The guilt of today's actions gnawed at him, as though there was an animal inside that was not yet satisfied. That there were more outbursts to come, that Lucas was not done dancing on the edge of a tall building. He still wanted to fall.

He thumped the pillows angrily and felt the tears brimming. He resisted the urge to sleep on the floor and instead tried to relax his muscles, counted sheep - did the myriad of useless exercises given him by the psychologist he had seen upon returning to England.

He still wasn't sure he wanted this. England was the job to him and it only seemed to get harder with time. How much worse could this get?

It was never easy for Lucas to sleep, alone or with another, and that night it was more difficult than ever.

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_**I'm sorry to see this fic end. Unfortunately, my next fan fic plot has been kinda nicked by Spooks writers and the new Max Brown character - my next fic was all about piracy and counter terrorism.**_

_**So I have no idea when I will publish again. Hopefully within the next month. **_

_**Please review!**_


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